Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
French Canadian Website and French Language URLs
-
Hello,
One of my clients has a question on a new Quebec, Canada version of their website. The website content and copy is in the French Canadian language, but the IT Director has asked if, for the purpose of SEO, should the URLs be in French as well?
So, this questions has two parts...
For SEO, should the URL's be in French or left in English, to avoid crawl errors?
For visitor UX, is there any reason to have them in French versus English?
-
So, was your hierarchy like this?
GER = www.domain.de = German language and URLs version of www.domain.com
FRA = www.domain.fr = French language and URLs version of www.domain.com
...and so on and so on?
-
So, this client has this current setup...
USA = www.domain.com in English
CAN = www.domain.ca in English
FR CAN = quebec.domain.ca = which based on this consideration, should be have URL's in French.
So, how would one handle accent marks and such in the URL?
We are using the Ektron CMS, which eventually, all the sites will live there and country specific domains can be redirected to a language and locale specific version of the website.
-
So, this client has this current setup...
USA = www.domain.com in English
CAN = www.domain.ca in English
FR CAN = quebec.domain.ca = which based on this consideration, should be have URL's in French.
So, how would one handle accent marks and such in the URL?
We are using the Ektron CMS, which eventually, all the sites will live there and country specific domains can be redirected to a language and locale specific version of the website.
-
We made 3 or 4 versions of our last clients site, cause the had German, French, English, and Chiniese, and what we did was a Umbraco CMS, so the client could do a version of all. That would be the best and safest rout. May be labor intensive, but smart thought process.
-
Well, is it content only available to French-Canadian's? For example, would your company's services be relevant to somebody from, say, Dallas, Texas in the US? Is any of your services relevant to English speaking people? And if so, what is the percentage?
Build your site for your clients/customers/users, and whatever makes sense to them. If only French speaking/reading people will be visiting your site (for the most part), then build everything in French (including URL's), as it will be legible. For the same reason you a Hindu site might not be relevant to you, regardless of their services (taking a stab in the dark that you might not know Hindu; I apologize if I'm wrong
You know what I mean? Bottom-line: build for your users and what is going to generate the greatest ROI.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Which Google does a .ie website get shown in?
Hi all, I am working on a .ie website and I was under the understanding that if you have a regional domain, like .ie you will limited to being shown in a search engine like google.ie When I go to International Targeting in Google SEarch Console it says the site is associated with: Ireland Am I limiting my ability to rank well in worldwide Google searches with this domain and if so, how can I counter this? Many thanks.
International SEO | | Bee1590 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131 -
Thai Characters in URL's
Does anyone have experience with non-Latin characters in URL's? We've launched a website in Thailand and picked Thai characters for URL's. However, when you copy it, it turns into something like this: http://www.imoneythailand.com/บัตรเครดิต Can it impact our website's crawlability? Also, is keyword in URL a ranking factor for non-Latin languages? Thanks in advance for help!
International SEO | | imoney0 -
How do I get a UK website to rank in Dubai?
We are trying to get a UK-based children's furniture website to rank in Dubai. We have had a couple of orders from wealthy expats in Dubai and it seems to be the correct target market. Does anyone have any specific knowledge of this area? We are promoting the same website as for the UK market. Also does anyone know any user behaviour stats on expatriates using search engines? Do they carry on using the version of Google they are used to, or do most change to the local version of Google? Thanks in advance
International SEO | | Wagada0 -
Translating URLs worth it?
My company has content in 23 different languages in 30+ countries. We translate page content but we don't translate URLs. I am trying to figure out whether it would be worth the considerable extra overhead to translate the URLs as well. I'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts of the Moz community. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | Logi0 -
Best domain for spanish language site targeting ALL spanish territories?
hi, we're have a strong .com domain and are looking to launch a site for spanish speakers (ie latin america + spain). we already have various subdirectories for some foreign language sites (eg. ourdomain.co.uk, us.ourdomain.com, ca.ourdomain.com, ourdomainchina.com, ourdomainindia.com etc) we already have a B2B site ourdomain.com-es which will remain the same. I'm thinking best practice would be to launch translated copy for the following: ourdomain.com/es ourdomain.com/cl ourdomain.com/mx ourdomain.com/pt etc etc firstly is this the best option? secondly, i'm really interested to hear whether there is a less time/resource intensive route that would give us visibility in ALL spanish speaking territories? Also - if we go with just one of the above (eg ourdomain.com/cl) how likely are we to get traction in other spanish speaking territories? any help much appreciated!
International SEO | | KevinDunne0 -
Website Translation
Hi All, I know its not an SEO question, but....................... Can anyone suggest a few good website translation "widgets" I would like to give those who are not fluent in English and option to choose another language in which to view the page text. Thank You!!!
International SEO | | APICDA0 -
Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?
Hi Everyone, This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites. We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de. On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below: example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users? Google guidelines say that this should be ok. Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community! Thanks, Supriya.
International SEO | | Amjath0